How to deal with a criminal syndicate?

[Otto Abnormalverbraucher]

So the last round I encountered a criminal syndicate AI for the first time. Over the years they opened up more than a dozen branch offices forcing me to build precinct houses/halls of judgement and use the anti crime campaign decisions everywhere while I could have well used the influence and the building slots for other things.

At first I felt there was nothing to do because there were multiple empires between us and everyone had their borders closed to me (authoritarian, xenophobe, militarist ... no surprise there). Until they conquered the L-Systems and we both had L-Gates in our empires, so finally I declared war on them to expel their branch offices. After I luckily won (bc their fleet was stronger than mine so I had to back off and after this one was defeated they quickly came back with so many smaller ones I couldn't go after all of them on two sides of my empire) I had some peace and quite for the duration of the truce. Then they started to open the branch offices again, so I declared another war to expel their offices and won, only to have them opening the offices again after 10 years ... This was going nowhere and due to their ridiculous amount of disinformation centers they've become the most influencial empire in the galactic community, while they were still able to somewhat keep up with my increasing military power outmatching everyone else. Apparently this was going absolutely nowhere.

My current take would be to just swallow the existence of the branch offices, make claims to their territory and slowly reduce their resource income and available population after a couple of wars until they're finally fully beaten. I'm also thinking about declaring war to impose my ideology or vassalize them (not sure if the latter would have the effect of getting rid of the branch offices though). What's the best way to deal with the syndicate to get rid of their branch offices for good?

PS: They might only have been so strong because they seemed to have been one of the advanced AI starts, that I had set up on game start. Not sure if they're that much of a big deal otherwise but I would still assume they are management-wise, though easier to battle.

[Mansen]

Fun fact - You can fly through empires to reach distant ones, as long as you have open borders. Maybe even grab yourself an ally.

[Otto Abnormalverbraucher]

Originally posted by Mansen:

Fun fact - You can fly through empires to reach distant ones, as long as you have open borders. Maybe even grab yourself an ally.

Yeah, well ... I've already written they had their borders closed for me. I actually wanted to force vassalization on some of them so the relationships were pretty bad and nothing to shortly make an ally out of or even just fix the relationship.

[Mansen]

Then you have your first step. Find the weakest opponent - See if they have have rivals who don't hate you.

People underrate diplomacy a lot. It can really make or break a campaign - And syndicates will absolutely exploit your inability to react. You may want to grab a governor that reduces crime to help reduce the impact.

[Heimdall313]

For the Crime buildings, build a Precinct on any planet with 25+ pops. yes they burn a build slot but they'll destroy the building.
If Psionic, build Psi Corps instead, extremely good at removing buildings.
When you can, destroy them with extreme prejudice and excessive firepower. Don't subjugate: annihilate.

[Otto Abnormalverbraucher]

Originally posted by Mansen:

Then you have your first step. Find the weakest opponent - See if they have have rivals who don't hate you.

People underrate diplomacy a lot. It can really make or break a campaign - And syndicates will absolutely exploit your inability to react. You may want to grab a governor that reduces crime to help reduce the impact.

Well, I was a slavery empire. Nobody liked me, at best they were neutral. Everyone between me and the syndicate was in a federation.

Originally posted by Heimdall313:

For the Crime buildings, build a Precinct on any planet with 25+ pops. yes they burn a build slot but they'll destroy the building.
If Psionic, build Psi Corps instead, extremely good at removing buildings.
When you can, destroy them with extreme prejudice and excessive firepower. Don't subjugate: annihilate.

I had precincts on every planet with a branch office. They never destroyed a single branch office.

[Azor]

just build and upgrade a precint. prepare an army. Declare war and eliminate crime syndicate.

Originally posted by Ryika:

Negotiate a deal with the crime lord on the planet once crime is above 10. Gives +10 Stability and immunity to most crime-related events.

Alternatively, keep crime at 0 and once every 10-12 years or so, a criminal branch office will be closed via an event.

you can keep that decision even when there's no crime. There's a neat trick you can do when you start the game and when your colonies reach about 20 pops: demote police and a few rulers - in a few seconds crime will rise to 10% -, activate negotiate with crime lords decision, re promote police and rulers (depending on governor traits and level you may need to remove governor, then put him back)

[Otto Abnormalverbraucher]

Originally posted by Azor:

just build and upgrade a precint. prepare an army. Declare war and eliminate crime syndicate.

If only it took just one war. I would have needed several to claim everything they had.

Originally posted by Ryika:

Negotiate a deal with the crime lord on the planet once crime is above 10. Gives +10 Stability and immunity to most crime-related events.

Alternatively, keep crime at 0 and once every 10-12 years or so, a criminal branch office will be closed via an event.

I had less issues with crime and stability, just annoying popups about gang wars, drug rings, crime lords etc. all the time (all the while crime was 0) and having to build precincts and using the anti-crime decision everywhere. It was more of an extreme annoyance that I wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible, than an actual problem.
I think I'm now in the year 2400-something, and as said, closing branch offices? Nope, didn't happen. Every 10 years is something I could have dreamed of.

[Otto Abnormalverbraucher]

Originally posted by Ryika:

The Crime Lord Deal will prevent these events.

I never made any deal with a crime lord.

Originally posted by Ryika:

It's possible to be unlucky with it if the circumstances are right: It's a 5% roll every month, and then it randomly picks an empire in the galaxy that fulfills the requirement for having a branch office closed. If it closes a branch office, then the owner of that branch office is immune to having another branch office closed for the next 10 years.

So the game's probably rolled to close branch offices in other empires.

Well, damn. That's very well possible. Hovering over their power in the galactic community to see their stats revealed an insane list of +10% from disinformation centres. Something like 20 were displayed but they had a lot more (the popup window just cut off there).

[Otto Abnormalverbraucher]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by Otto Abnormalverbraucher:

I never made any deal with a crime lord..

Yes, so make it in the future. ;)

That doesn't make sense. You're telling me crime lord deals prevent the branch office expelling events, then you're telling me to make that deal. But I would like to have those events ...

[Otto Abnormalverbraucher]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by Otto Abnormalverbraucher:

That doesn't make sense. You're telling me crime lord deals prevent the branch office expelling events, then you're telling me to make that deal. But I would like to have those events ...

You've misunderstood me.

The Crime Lord Deal prevents most negative crime events. Essentially, the popups that have been annoying you.

It does not have any influence on the event that removes criminal branch offices from empires.

I see. Well, that would be one less problem. But possibly requires more precincts.

[Pury]

war

[Otto Abnormalverbraucher]

I see, thanks.

[ScreamCon]

Yes arm up on police, they can only get crime so high, use every crime reducing stat you can. Syndicate is actually hard to play, but only if other players try to stop you. It the type of megacorp if you like to war all the time.

If you can hold 0 crime, eventually their headquarters get shut down. And still sometimes if you cant, their building types give you extra jobs or resources like the normal megacorp. Crime at 100% only gives you 4 criminals max, it doesn't get worse than that other than letting the syndicate make insane energy off you. That's what your worried about. I mean the crime events can be bad but only if your already really struggling with stability.

You can actually let a friend make money off your empire like that so long as you keep stability up. It's a possible team strategy. So long as their isn't enemy syndicates.

It could get harder with multiple syndicates, but still there is a later game world type the penal colony that demise the syndicate even more. As they massively reduce crime empire wide. I think even your ecumonopolis can have? I'm not sure. Its a world decision type.

Finally dominance tradition tree gives more crime suppression from officers.

[Helicopter200]

in my game a criminal syndicate got wiped out by determined exterminators in AI rebelion lol

[Cryten]

A quick note that if an empire cant get ships to you you can simply engage in a remove branch office war and settle status quo. All offices will be removed unless they capture your planets.